Don’t Be No Educated Fool: A College Degree Isn’t A Guarantee

Washington, D.C. – Dr. Robert Simmons

And out he walked. And then some years later he reappeared at my high school graduation. And out he walked…never to been seen again except for his name on my credit report. My father physically disappeared from my life but remained a cogent part of my situation by stealing my social security number. These images and interactions with my father over the course of 37 years have not only challenged me but also taught me valuable lessons.

In my current role as a university professor I have been given an opportunity to experience the joy of seeing many young, African American men graduate who come from situations like mine. One young man, disconnected from his father, shared with me how my story has shown him that he doesn’t have to be a reflection of his father’s poor choices but should always use his father’s example as a road map for where not to go.

The Back Story

Both of us realized our fathers seemed to defy the uneducated narrative commonly associated with African American fathers who misunderstand their responsibilities as a father. With a degree from Morehouse College, my father seemed to have it all. According to my mother, and his college friends, he was very bright and actively engaged with issues of equity in the African American community. But what happened along the way? Why would he be on parole when I was a year old and incarcerated over and over again during my lifetime? What would possess my father to steal my social security number? These questions still fester in my mind but the learning that has come as a result of these questions has resulted in a series of lessons that I often share with young African American males.

Don’t Be No Educated Fool

A friend and I were recounting the many sayings our grandmothers used to tell us. Some of them didn’t make any sense—“he’s peeing over a rail fence”—but his grandmothers saying—“don’t be no educated fool”—resonated with my reflections on the life my father has wasted. Some would assume that a “Morehouse man”, coming from a legacy of participation in the Civil Rights Movement, would be inherently blessed with intellectual gifts to impact the world. While the intellectual gifts are probably evident in the ways that my father graduated from Morehouse, his usage of those gifts were for his own criminal intentions with no sense of commitment to the community or me for that matter. In other words—he had become an educated fool.

Luke 12:48—From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked. Growing up in Detroit I took great pride in knowing that my mother went to Spelman and my father went to Morehouse. As the literature in my house revolved around Na’im Akbar’s Vision for Black Men and Lerone Bennett’s Before the Mayflower,  I had a deep understanding of how Spelman and Morehouse graduates had impacted not only the African American community but the global struggle for social justice. As a result, I longed to hear stories of my fathers’ participation in these events, but I became disappointed as I grew older and learned the truth about his socially destructive behaviors. Based on this knowledge and understanding of the value of a college degree, I have suggested to many young African Americans that your college degree now makes you responsible for not only yourselves but others—others in the African American community, others in the global community.

Life Is All About The Choices You Make

The other day I was talking to a high school senior at a high school in Washington DC. During our discussion he was asking me if I knew that I would become a university professor. I took a long pause and said—no, but I knew that I would only go as far as the choices I made allowed me. After a long pause he said, “well Doc I guess I had better go to class so I can make some good choices.” Later on in the day as I was walking with a teacher, the same student stopped me and told me that he wanted to come to my office at Loyola so he could see the campus—“I want to see what you professor types do.” As we were walking and talking he revealed to me that his father had been incarcerated in a maximum-security prison on drug charges for most of his life. During our conversation we began to talk about the choices that our fathers had made and how they impacted us. We both came to the conclusion that the others’ perception of what we would become was tainted by our fathers’ choices. But without saying a word and proving a point that I had long pondered and shared with young people all over the United States, this young man told me—I don’t have to be like my father. I can make my own choices about where my life will go.